September Update.

September has come and gone. I can't believe we are already in the middle of October. Here is a brief update of the highlights from the past month.

At LCH:

We have had student teachers from a local college doing their final "rotations/practice" before they take their exams to become official teachers. It has been so fun having them around this past month. They have brought so many creative ideas and so much energy to the school. And they kids are really enjoying having some new teachers and fresh faces around.

Last week we played an exciting football (soccer) game of the student teachers verses the old teachers and staff. It was the event of the week. Everyone came out to watch and the kids rolled with laughter and excitement to see their teachers playing against each other. The old teachers won, but it became a really close game once we put in some of the older LCH boys to play for the student teacher side. These boys are good!! (well of course, one of them went to nationals).

I also have been utilizing the great resources of the new library and had the P6 class read a book together called, " Who Stole the Wizard of Oz". This was such a fun thing for the class.

Seeing as it was a mystery novel dealing with clues and treasure maps, I thought a scavenger hunt would only be appropriate as our ending project. It is funny how we take so many things for granted. For example, rhyming clues. We don't think twice about the rhyme and our brains can easily wrap around the idea that we are suppose to search out and find the hidden meaning of a clue. Well, what I forgot is that my friends in P6 have never been exposed to a scavenger hunt, much less rhyming clues. After dividing them into teams and giving them their first clue, you could feel the excitement each group had as they read it. All eyes were on the clue and ears were on the reader. I expected the groups to dart away to where they suspected the clue was leading (seeing as I made the clue very simple intentionally for their first attempt). What happened after reading the clue? Ten little eyes looked at me with a blank stare. Bummer. Not the expected reaction. But after I had explained to them a little on how they must think outside of the box, each team "got it" and ran to their next destination. The final stop was a treasure of ice cream!! Yum.

My favorite part was at the end, hearing each team comparing which clues they had similar and which were different. They told me this was their best day so far. (always rewarding to hear).



My Adventures:
I have had a lot of great opportunites the past month. First, I went rafting down the Nile River. This was awesome. There are a lot of class 4 and class 5 rapids with scary names like "Dead man's hole", "50/50" and "The bad spot". Our raft guide also added to the thrill with statements like, "Ok, when we reach this next rapid we are going to paddle 2 times, get down, and hold on. If you fall out... Well just don't fall out because that wouldn't be good." They were serious rapids. I went with 2 of my housemates, one who was a raft guide all summer in Colorado. She said the rapids were much bigger, but did not take as much technique because the space to go on the rapids was much bigger. At one point we went down a 5 meter waterfall. What!! Who does that?!?! Straight down the waterfall. It was a thrill and I really enjoyed my whole day.

This is Brooklyn and Emily. We woke up really early to drive from Mbale to Jinja that morning. Here we were waiting for breakfast to be served and the briefing meeting before hitting the fierce white waters :)

And this is the morning after the trip. We slept at a little campsite for rafters in a hostel. I was happy that I made it through the previous day with only one time of falling out (it was the last rapid and I am pretty sure that our guide intentionally made the raft tip). That morning, as I ate my breakfast, I also enjoyed watching nature... monkeys jumping from the branches of the trees behind me! You don't see that in Texas!

I also was able to hike/climb Mt. Wanale- the mountain that I see everyday at the end of my neighborhood (and the one that many visitors mistake to be Mt. Elgon). There is a waterfall at the top that was our goal. It was a 5 hour journey in all, top to bottom again and a pretty serious climb. But it was wonderful to be surrounded by the beauty of the Lord and to see Mbale from a birds eye view. I loved it and would go again. I also have many more pictures that I took that show life in Africa, so stay tuned for those.